Wild Ideas

BEHIND THE NEWS

June 03, 2001|By DAVID FUNKHOUSER

The sound of the river's rush floated up a sloping soft meadow to the ridge where we sat 2,000 feet above, and that's all we heard. From our perch amid jagged blades of limestone we could see the Kongakut far below. To the left, south, the river drained out of the sharp peaks of the Brooks Range; to the right, north, it wound in ribbons through thick gravel bars -- descendants of mountains -- and on through the hills to the Arctic Ocean 25 miles or so away.

We were halfway along a June rafting trip through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, at the top of Alaska about 15 miles from the Yukon border. Flown in, dropped off, left alone.

Sweaty from a steep afternoon hike, we zipped up and tucked in and sidled up to rock outcrops to break a chilly breeze. The landscape is treeless, gray and brown rock and green tundra carpet. The sun slid in and out of clouds to the west. Far below to the right, in a gravelly draw next to the river, our tents were just dots of color. Bright orange lichen blazed the rocks at our backs; at our feet, everywhere violet and white lupine made the most of the season. No one spoke; just the distant whoosh of the river.

This was a refuge moment: Mountains, river, sun, clouds, rocks and flowers tingled with potential. This is the way things have been since, oh, the end of the last Ice Age.

I drive up over the small hill in the middle of our suburban cul de sac in Guilford, off to work. Out of the corner of my eye I spot something big beside the road. I slow down. A turkey vulture stands at the edge of the pavement. About three feet tall, black, with a scrawny pink neck and head, he looks exactly like a cartoon vulture. No doubt he has breakfast in mind, something recently dead. He looks up at me and watches as I drive by, eight feet away, but does not stir.

This reminds me of another morning, off to work, up over the hill, and zip, thump -- a squirrel plays chicken with my car and loses. Through my rearview mirror, I can see its tail still twitching.

These are suburban Connecticut moments. This is the way things have been at least since, oh, the beginning of the Mall Age.

I run into foxes and coyotes trotting along Route 77 at night. I encounter deer on an evening hike in Westwoods, down by the shore, and they stop and look, as if to say, ``Oh, it's you,'' before bounding away. Every spring, a pair of mallards spends afternoons paddling in our pool and munching at the bird feeder. The other night I heard a commotion at the front door, and turned on the light: Through the glass, a raccoon peered back at me, looking for something.

Slowly but surely, our suburbs are turning into a Walt Disney cartoon: We get along, grudgingly, with Chip and Dale, who, grudgingly, learn to get along with us.

Unlike Disney World, there are casualties: 3,000 deer were killed by motor vehicles last year (at least that many -- that's just what's reported to the Fish and Wildlife Division). The toll among bears, bobcats, opossum, raccoons, skunks, fishers and squirrels is positively Darwinian. Actually, not really Darwinian; that would be somehow at least fair. Cars running over animals is, because of who we are, unavoidable, and a complete waste of life.

You cannot run faster than a grizzly bear. He sprints over terrain where a human is hard-pressed to find firm footing. The guide on our Kongakut River trip says it is not good to joke about them, or say bad things; it is bad karma. I was fiddling in our tent down by the river one morning, my head in the tent and my rear end waving back and forth in the sunlight while I struggled to pull something from my duffel, when my brother called out my name. I stuck my head out of the tent and saw him walk away from me, toward the rest of our small party, who stood together on a slight rise above the camp. They looked like seven people huddled on a tiny island. ``You ought to come out here,'' he said.

I turned my head to look where they were looking, to a hill we had hiked up the day before. A young grizzly ambled down the hill, headed straight for camp. I joined the group; the breeze was at our backs, and we wanted to be as visible as possible so our presence would not come as a surprise.

The bear stood 7 or 8 feet tall; he wandered into the low willows beyond our camp, his head rising above the leaves now and again to sniff the air and look around. A herd of some 300 caribou had passed camp earlier and were spread out in a meadow perhaps 300 yards up the draw to our left. Would he smell them? Would he pursue them? Just how hungry was he? The bear didn't see the caribou, or ignored them, but he got a good whiff of us, and when he got 150 feet away, turned to the river. He did not run: He strolled across the heavy gravel, paused to look at us, and lumbered into the ice-cold rush of the river. He stopped halfway across to stand and look at us again, and moved on.

This was another of those moments. This time, we understood we were not at the top of the food chain.